


Friends

by Tammany



Series: Mr. Spence's Repose [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Male Bonding, Male Friendship, Male romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 17:18:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3617919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another step in the story of Mr. Spence and Lestrade.</p><p>They take their time. They find their footing. They progress....slowly, and often without quite knowing how they're getting where they are going.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends

Two mallets rose and fell, rose and fell, over and over, the metallic note shocking out across the little pasture opposite Mr. Spence’s cottage. Mr. Spence and Lestrade were putting the perimeter fencing in place. They hammered lengths of rebar into the soil against the line of the stone wall. Later they planned to build a top layer of stonework over, to ensure that Dominic, the chestnut gelding, won’t step on a length of rebar worked up through the soil, and skewer his soft inner hoof. That has to wait, though, until they’ve decided if they need to also put in steel roofing to keep the badgers out of the field.

They hoped it won’t be needed. Their badger, who’d earned the nickname “Sherlock” for complicated reasons both understood and neither would explain to their acquaintances around town, had shown a willingness to be redirected back into the hedgerows and verge and wild meadows and woods. If he remained willing, the galvanized roofing wouldn’t be needed, and they could finish quickly.

Mr. Spence and Lestrade were friends.

It reminded Mr. Spence of a child’s book title from his own childhood—one he recalled reading to his little brother—a warm, squirming child who talked almost faster than Mr. Spence could read. Whose fingers were everywhere, pointing out details on the page.

_Frog and Toad are Friends.*_

He remembered how the first story goes. Toad has been sleeping since November, hibernating as all good toads ought, and he doesn’t want to get up early in April…not even to run in the woods or swim in the river or count the stars on the porch with Frog. He wants to sleep just a little longer.

But Frog will be lonely.

Mr. Spence smiled, thinking of it. He’s not sure if he’s Frog or Toad. Or perhaps he and his friend take it in turns? He let his gaze slip sidewise to observe Lestrade on his own side of the pasture. He’s a fine looking man, kneeling on the turf, one hand steadying the rebar and the other drawing back the mallet.

Mr. Spence was trained in the observation of small detail, and had spent his lifetime perfecting his skill. In some ways he considered it to have saved his sanity—the anguish and melodrama of life is seldom found in the tiny details. Those instead hold the beauty and the grace. It’s as you pan back and see their cost and their power that you want to despair. Mr. Spence had often retreated into the snowflake perfection of detail even as he managed the broader arcs created when those details came together.

Today he chose the minute details again. Lestrade’s spine—a supple s-curve, rising from a round bum up to shoulders just growing into bull-ish heft. A face that was once perfect for a male ingénu now developing the heavier lines and features of advanced maturity. Lestrade looked more like you’d expect a Celtic copper to look, these days, as his nose thickened and his brows became more prominent and his lips thinned and his jaw grew ever stronger. Fortunately Mr. Spence found both versions attractive, and this new, second version of Lestrade almost agonizingly beloved—a constant reminder of the other man’s strength, and his vulnerability.

His entire body, to Mr. Spence, was a dialog of strength in age. Wrists heavier than they once were. Neck stronger and thicker. Forehead more pronounced. Wrinkles forming. And, yet, God…what music he made when he moved. Jesus wept. Sometimes, inside where no one could see, so did Mr. Spence.

Mr. Spence glanced up at the sun, capably judging the time by its position in the sky. Some might have thought that a new skill, thinking of Mr. Spence as a city man living a city life of clocks and watches. That would be a mistake. Mr. Spence grew up in the country for much of his childhood. Then he trained in certain esoteric skills popular amongst men and women on certain specialized career tracks—careers in which being able to navigate by the stars and tell time by the position of the sun might prove useful. It’s Lestrade who’s entered an entire new world of hedgerows and thickets and gardens and pastures.

Mr. Spence watched out for him, trying not to hover, but taking care the other man didn’t get himself in over his head, or make too annoying a mistake. It was easy to make a dog’s dinner of things when you were in a new environment. Mr. Spence worked hard to be an invisible guide and guardian. Lestrade was older than he. Lestrade’s dignity had been endlessly injured during his earlier life. Mr. Spence wanted very much not to injure it again. It wasn’t an easy challenge. Mr. Spence was not accustomed to worrying about other people’s egos. He’d operated in a world in which ego was no more an advantage than caring. Second-best were expected to give way to first-best because lives were on the line—nations rose and fell.

Mr. Spence had been a first-rate mind. Lestrade had not. Not in the world they’d experienced. Now Mr. Spence suddenly found himself dealing with what that had meant—and trying to change where it led.

It was near mid-morning. They’d got several yards of work done on their respective walls.

Mr. Spence rose, tucking his mallet into his belt. He slipped off his work gloves, removed the ear plugs from his ears, and walked across the pasture at an angle, making sure to come into Lestrade’s view as soon as possible to avoid startling him. As he came close, Lestrade straightened, rested the heavy head of the mallet on the soil, and braced his free hand in the small of his back, flexing and moaning—a friendly,  relaxed moan such as a horse made when the saddle was removed after a good gallop, or a dog made rolling amiably on the hearth rug after a happy ramble.

“Bugger,” Lestrade said, grinning. “That’s a chore, ennit? Feel like Thor in the movies, damned if I don’t.”

Mr. Spence’s mouth flicked at the corners, and his eyes lit. “And you quite look it, too.”

Lestrade gave a shout of laughter, and prentended to flounce long tresses. “Oi, remember it! Pretty thing I am, all Goldilocks and Asgardian drag. All I need is a cape, yeah?”

“And an incomprehensibly top-heavy helmet designed more for theater than for combat,” Mr. Spence agreed, amiably. “It’s going on half-ten, by my estimate. We’ve made good progress in the cool of the morning. Time to pack it all away and get on to other things. I have a commission coming due, and I know you wanted to work on the veg patch sometime soon. Perhaps we both take until noon, then have lunch together in town?”

Lestrade’s face lit. “The Cross-Eyed Bear?” he asked, referring to one of his favorite pubs.

Mr. Spence grimaced. “I was hoping for Sweet Sal’s,” he said, referring to his own favorite tea room. But, seeing the glitter in Lestrade’s eyes dim a little, he sighed, and said, “But the Cross-Eyed Bear does provide an appealing luncheon. Perhaps we can pick up some pastries from Sal’s on the way back out of town.”

“You could come have dinner at mine,” Lestrade said. “I can drive you back later.”

“We’re taking the car,” Mr. Spence said, forbiddingly. “.I am not leaving Archie behind, this time. But dinner is a possibility. Yours or mine, either will do.”

“I’ll think on it,” Lestrade said.

They put away the tools for the pasture project, and Lestrade went out to the raised beds Mr. Spence had put in for him. Mr. Spence went upstairs and took a quick shower, changing from his coarsest clothes, reserved for manual labor, to a more civilized pair of corduroy trousers and an oxford shirt. He didn’t dress the way he once had. It didn’t fit his role. Mr. Spence, the freelance web designer, could never afford Mr. Holmes’ hand-tailored, bespoke suits, make of silk-wool blends, with all the bells and whistles added.

Sometimes he missed those clothes. The simplicity, the coarse fibers, the tawdry workmanship made his wardrobe as Mr. Spence seem positively penitential sometimes. As though decent clothing had been given up in a life-long fast to make up for the sins of Mycroft Holmes.

He looked at himself in the mirror and wondered what Lestrade saw in him—why he wanted Mr. Spence as a friend so much he’d changed his whole life to make it possible. What did he see that seemed even to suggest more was possible?

He leaned toward the mirror.

Mycroft Holmes had been a role, too. In many ways he’d been more of a role than Mr. Spence: every detail planned to mystify, obfuscate, give odd ambiguous cues—Mycroft Holmes, the “minor government civil servant,” whose clothes and cars and actions all suggested that he was either much more—or much less. A poseur and a dilettante trying to pass off old money and good breeding as power—or a man of power understating the issue in ways his enemies could not parse.

Mycroft Homles had been the performance of Mr. Spence’s life, he thought, a little wistfully. He nudged the stray forelock curl into place. It was now an island lost in a sea of scalp—one last vestige of his boyhood hair line.

There were things Mr. Holmes could have chosen to do about that. Mr. Spence faced a limited set of choices: minoxidil, transplants, cheap toupes, and comb-overs.

Or, he supposed, he could shave it all and go bald as a hen’s egg. That’s what Lestrade would do, wasn’t it? Laugh, grab the clippers, and zizz it all off in one smooth sacrifice—then flaunt his shaven pate with jaunty assurance.

Instead, he prodded the long lock again with one forefinger, then retrieved a jar of hair gel, matching the wave of the lock into the remaining hair beyond the blank expanse of empty skin. He went to the window and looked out, trying to gauge how much time he had to work.

Lestrade was rumbling around the back garden cheerfully. He’d apparently got spare gardening clothes out in the back shed, as he’d switched to safari shorts, a pair of Wellies, a short-sleeved T, and gardening gloves. He had tools leaning against the back stone wall, and was fetching a load of aged manure from the compost heap behind Dominick’s barn. He was singing.

His voice wasn’t young, and it had plenty of texture—but he carried a tune well, with strength and expression, and his joy filled his voice. Mycroft couldn’t make out the words, and guessed by the melody that it was probably rock…it sounded more like rock than anything, he supposed.

He smiled as Lestrade waded in among the raised beds, singing and huffing as he tossed compost onto the earth. Lestrade was taking such unexpected joy from gardening—indeed, between the “allotment” here at Mycroft’s, and the flower beds down at his little flat in town, and the chickens in his back garden, he was turning into a serious born-again hayseed. Granted he wasn’t remotely interested in learning to ride Dominic, and hadn’t yet adopted his whippet or bought pigeons.

Archie was in the back garden with him, watching everything, pacing alongside, eyes gleaming and whiskered filled with chaff, leaf fragments, and almost certainly traces of horse manure.

Mr. Spense smiled, fighting back an ache that was both sweet and bitter. He finished his grooming, and hurried downstairs, setting himself up at his favorite work station under the front window. Behind him he could hear Lestrade still singing, and chattering to Archie, and Archie woofing back.  In front of him was the simple little front garden, with a few thorny shrub roses and lavender plants and a stand of holly hocks just beginning to rise up in tall green spires near the front door. There was a front stone wall, and the little country lane, and the pasture beyond. There were robins chasing grass bugs.

There was peace.

It didn’t take him long to do the day’s planned work. There was some time spent working to get the right color effects for the clients’ logo, as in spite of everything their graphic artist’s pantone selections didn’t work in a web environment. He rescaled the logo, and wrote up two versions of how the page drop-through might work, then bundled it all up and sent it back to the client for review. Then he went out back and leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, and called, “I’m done for now. You?”

Lestrade looked up, grinning, and wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist. “Could be convinced. Is there a beer in it for me?”

“I think the Cross-Eyed Bear will offer you a pint.”

“Good, then. Gimme a mo’ and we can run on in.”

He washed in the back garden under the garden hose. He pulled off the t-shirt, showing all his upper torso with a courage that Mr. Spence literally could not imagine: greyed chest-hair, skin not as taut as in youth, just a bit more padding everywhere…

How did he dare? Did he know that Mr. Spence looked and cherished the old age spots and the permanent burned in freckles of old sunburns, and the scars of a long life with both the Met and MI5 and MI6?

Mycroft kept his hands clamped around his own upper arms, arms crossed over his chest, trying to understand what he felt. It wasn’t what he had once felt as a young man, seeing other young men in the locker rooms and clubs and digs of Oxford. Back then he’d no doubt have thought Lestrade’s body disturbing—old, beginning to break down. Vulnerable. It wasn’t a million things he’d felt before. The nearest he could come was the agony he’d felt rocking Sherlock in his arms, waiting for an ambulance to come during the boy’s first overdose, and even that wasn’t right. Then there had been too much anger, and guilt mixed in with the protective surge of love.

_Cherish. I cherish him._

He flinched from the revelation. It was too true. It had far too little to do with whether he ever bedded Lestrade, or possessed him in any way. Just knowing he existed—all that brimming, eager, stubborn integrity, all that laughter, all that kindness. It filled Mr. Spence up.

Mycroft Holmes couldn’t have felt this, he thought. Mycroft Holmes would not have felt this.

_Frog and Toad are Friends…_

Those stories had been so simple, and so joyful. He remembered them. He remembered the feeling of a squirming baby brother with a far too heavy nappy who would not allow a change to be made until the last word was read, until the last illustration had been traced with grubby baby fingers. Eight-year-old Mycroft had seen himself as the cheerful Mr. Frog then, dealing with the cranky, colicky, suspicious Sherlock. Now he was older. He was Toad. He was lured from his warm bed and his quiet life by Lestrade’s boundless hunger for life.

The man seemed to grab the dry gray granite of life and squeeze it in his fists—and juice ran out, living, brilliant, fizzing juice, drawn from dead rock.

When he came out of the shed he’d managed to tidy himself up, back in duck chinos and a checked shirt open at the neck and a team jacket promoting Manchester United, “Because,” as he had told Mr. Spence, “if I’m going to spend half my days up here, I’ve got to root for Man U, even if I root for Arsenal when I’m back in Lonnon. Fair is fair. You root for the home team.” His silver-brindle hair sparkled, still damp, under the noon sun. “Ready?” he asked. “I drive us on the beast, or you drive us in the car?”

“I drive us in the car,” Mr. Spence said, firmly. “Arhcie’s gone without us too often, lately.”

“Have to eat outside the pub.”

“They’ve got a nice garden for it, and tables. And the weather’s good.”

The drive down was pleasant. Mr. Spence drove carefully—carefully enough that a few of the local yahoos cut around him, honking and giving the two-finger salute as they went past.

“You might speed up a bit,” Lestrade said, fighting back a smile as Mr. Spence tutted and grumbled and scolded under his breath. He had his arms wrapped around Archie, who was trying to lean so far out the open passenger window he might have fallen out without the extra precaution.

“I am strictly within the law and the posted safety limits for the road,” Mr. Spence said. He’d spent years being carted around like fragile goods by drivers who knew how to get a man from point A to point B in perfect safety. He had learned to appreciate their steady, conscientious driving, and imitated it quite precisely when precious lives were at risk.

Lestrade and Archie were precious lives. Let the local louts honk and fly the bird: Mr. Spence’s passengers would arrive at the Cross-Eyed Bear intact.

They ate at a table in the sun, Archie lying between Mr. Spence and Lestrade, begging crusts and little pinches of meat as they ate their pork pies and enjoyed apples and cheddar and drank their fill of the pub’s own homebrewed cider.

“Ho, Deek!” someone called. Lestrade looked up, grinning, and waved across the back garden to an older man just coming in with friends.

“Oi, Luke!” He turned to Mr. Spence. “This here’s Luke—remember I told you about him? Worked for the Greater Manchester Police up till five-six years back?”

Mr. Spence nodded, eyes reserved and distant, but polite. “Yes, I recall.” He smiled a neat, forced smile—his old Mycroft Holmes “diplomacy” smile, convincing without being either real or warm. “You were head of your division, as I recall?”

Luke nodded, and introduced his friends—all old coppers themselves. “Come on over and join us,” he said. “We old lags may have escaped from the force, but we’re still serving time as coppers, no matter what.” He gave Mr. Spence an odd look. “And you… I thought Deek here said you were a copper yourself.” His voice made it clear he found such a claim unbelievable.

“Wrong lot,” Lestrade said. He tapped his nose. “Kept to the background. Never front lines.”

The others glanced around, each finding some personal category in which to place Deek Lestrade’s friend.

“Secret squirrel?” Luke asked.

“If you ask the home office, they’ll deny they ever heard of him,” Lestrade said, with a grin that somehow suggested that such a denial would mean nothing.

“Well—any friend of Deek’s,” Luke said, though Mr. Spence was willing to bet it was more a matter of manners than actual hospitality. Still, he waited to see if Lestrade would choose to join the two tables.

He was relieved when, instead, Lestrade apologized and suggested they had errands to run before heading home.

Later, walking down the lane to where the car was parked, Mr. Spence said, “Deek?”

“Luke’s nickname for a DCI,” Lestrade said, grinning.

“Ah.” Mr. Spence walked along quietly. After a time he asked, cautiously, “Would you prefer I call you that? Rather than ‘Lestrade’? Or Greg?”

“Or Gregory when you’re scolding me?”

Mr. Spence managed a tight, uncertain smile. “Or that, too.”

Lestrade considered, as Mycroft unlocked the car. “Nah,” he said after a moment. “I’m fine with ‘Lestrade,’ really. ‘Greg’ is fine. ‘Deek’ is just what Luke nicknames all us DCIs. It’s not like I need a pet name.”

Mr. Spence nodded. And, yet, the name is now part of his inner picture of Lestrade.

_Mr. Spence and Deek are friends._

They went to the tea shop and purchased their pastries. They stopped at the butchers for chops, and at the greengrocer’s to collect some salad supplies and a small cabbage. Somehow they had, between them, silently agreed on dinner at Mr. Spence’s house. Lestrade could take the bike back in on his own, after all.

Mr. Spence jogged out of his way, though, and pulled up in front of Lestrade’s flat. At his friend’s bewildered glance, he said, “Go feed  and water the chickens. And grab spare clothes. Last time I had you over for dinner you drank too much and spent the night in the spare room.”

“Mike…”

“Morgan.”

“Mr. Spence, then,” Lestrade said, grumbling a bit. “I can see myself home.”

“If you attempt to drive drunk I will confiscate the keys to the scooter,” Mr. Spence said. “Better to have fed the chickens and packed a bag if I do.”

Lestrade rolled his eyes, but surrendered.

Mr. Spence stayed downstairs when Lestrade collected his things. He worked to train Archie not to chase chickens. Archie disliked the rule. Chickens were such tempting scuttle-bait. They ran and pecked and clucked and flapped and simply begged for an active terrier to prove his worth as a hunter. Mr. Spence worked though, keeping control over the dog, watching the chickens to be sure none came too close. Still, he was glad when Lestrade came down, tossed an overnight bag on the little table in the breakfast nook, and came out into the back garden to feed the flock.

“The dahlias are coming up a treat, aren’t they?” he asked Mr. Spence. Mr. Spence allowed that they were, indeed, coming up a treat—two feet tall and showing buds already. The pansies had spread and filled in, edging the beds beautifully—though they were a bit pecked and tattered from attention from the flock of chickens.

Lestrade tossed feed around liberally, and checked the watering dishes. He checked the nests, gathering up six fresh eggs he and Mr. Spence could have for breakfast the next day. He wrapped the eggs in a bit of hay in a bucket—then stood, turning the rim of the bucket around in his square, capable hands, as he looked uneasily down at the flower beds.

“Are you sure you don’t mind me staying over?” he asked.

Mr. Spence didn’t pretend to be ignorant of the issues at hand. He was not, among other things, a social man. And neither he nor Lestrade was much experienced in this nebulous form of friendship. He smiled, blending sweetness and worry. “I am sure I don’t mind us trying,” he said, looking for the most honest truth he could tell.

Lestrade nodded, still staring at the flower beds. “Last time this came up, it didn’t come up, exactly,” he said, then laughed, sudden and raucous and amused at his own unintended double entendre. “No. Sorry. Not what I mean. Everything worked, OK? ‘Fully functional,’ like they used to say on Star Trek. But last time I was asking questions about staying overnight with guys, we didn’t care bollocks how we’d feel about it the next day, you know? We were all in it for ‘tonight.’ Last time I was worried about ‘tomorrow’ it was with my wife, and between us we made a right mess of it.” He looked up at Mr. Spence, eyes shier and more hesitant than Mr. Spence had ever seen them before. “I don’t know what I’m doin’, mate. Not sure I even know what I want—much less what you want. You know?”

Mr. Spence considered, and nodded, knowing he was no less shy. He said, “Mr. Spence and Deek Lestrade are friends. No matter what happens. No matter what we do—I want that. If that means nothing more for all the time that’s left me, that’s fine. It’s still what I want.”

Lestrade’s face went blank and shaken. “That—doesn’t seem fair to you, yeah?”

Mr. Spence shrugged, and said, quietly, “I have been Mike Holmes. And Mr. Mycroft Holmes. And now I am Mr. Spence. And I shall be lucky, as Mr. Spence, to have thirty  more years. I have spent the first two thirds of my life learning what I don’t want. This is the final third, and I know what matters to me right now. We are friends. The rest is just…the medium we play that out in.”

Lestrade snorted. “They say the medium is the message, you know?”

“They are wrong,” Mr. Spence said, eyes fierce. “I will write it in pixels or charcoal or fountain-pen ink. I will play it out in sacrifice or acceptance. I will be your chaste friend or your lover. Whatever we find works. But no matter what medium we choose, it will still say this: Mr. Spence and Gregory Lestrade are friends…and that is enough.”

Lestrade blinked. “That’s…” He stopped, gulped, and tried again. “That’s…”

Mr. Spence nodded, not looking at the other man. He took the bucket from his hands, and whistled to Archie, who was trying to strike up an acquaintance with a particularly charming speckled hen. “Come on, Archie. Time to get home. Don’t forget your toothbrush, Deek.”

“Lestrade.”

“I don’t know. I kind of liked ‘Deek.’”

“The hell you did,” Lestrade chuckled, and he grabbed his things and they went out to the car together, and drove back to the cottage on the lane.

**Author's Note:**

> Frog and Toad are Friends is the first in a series of wonderful children’s books by Arnold Lobel, first published in 1970….perfect timing to have been read to Sherlock, If right on the thin line for being read to Mycroft. You can get a copy at Kindle for under $2.00. You may find it worth it, for both the extra layer if adds to this story, and for its own sake.


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